In Little Rock, Clinton Says Integration Work Isn't Done

Forty years ago last week, nine black teenagers walked through the
doors of Little Rock, Ark.'s Central High School for the first time. To
ensure their protection, federal troops with bayonets escorted the
youngsters through angry mobs.

Today, black students walk through the same doors and share the
space with their white peers every school day without the tension and
threats of 1957.

But that doesn't mean the fight for integration of Central High and
the rest of the nation's schools is over, President Clinton told
students there last Thursday in a ceremony marking the anniversary of
the first day of school for the students known as the Little Rock
Nine.

"Today, children of every race walk through the same door, but then
they often walk down different halls," Mr. Clinton said.

"Not only in this school, but across America, they sit in different
classrooms, they eat at different tables. They even sit in different
parts of the bleachers at the football game."

Throughout the nation, the president added, many minority students
don't even have the opportunity to attend schools with white
classmates.

The lesson for the students is that the fight for a color-blind
society is not over, Mr. Clinton said.

More Work To Do

One example of a place where work needs to be done may be Little
Rock itself.

Schools in the state's capital city and its surrounding county have
been under the supervision of a federal court since 1982.

The settlement of a desegregation lawsuit involving the city and
county schools created magnet schools, leading to about half of the
city's 24,400 students being bused to school, according to Don R.
Roberts, the interim superintendent of the Little Rock district.

Overall, about half of the city's children are white, but only
one-third of the city's total public school enrollment is
Caucasian.

Those numbers are the same as the findings of a recent report that
found the separation of races increasing in the nation's schools.

In another reflection of a national trend, Little Rock's schools
also place a disproportionately high number of white children in
advanced courses, Mr. Roberts said.

"There's more to do, but I don't think there's any intent to harm
anyone," he said.

"The culture has changed" in the past 40 years, Mr. Roberts
said.

The city plans to submit a plan to the court this fall that would
lead to its release from court supervision in three years, Mr. Roberts
said.

To solve the nation's "resegregation" problem, Mr. Clinton promised
to use the strong arm of the federal government.

"We know when the constitutional rights of our citizens are
threatened, the national government must guarantee them," Mr. Clinton
said in his speech last week, one of a series in his initiative to
promote a "conversation" about the nation's racial divisions.

"Talk is fine, but when they are threatened, you need strong laws
faithfully enforced and upheld by independent courts."

What's Next?

One prominent civil rights activist said he welcomed the president's
focus on the issue, but wants a promise that Mr. Clinton will wield his
executive powers to reverse the lost ground for integration.

"My question is: Will he follow this up by directing the Department
of Justice to resist efforts to dismantle desegregation?" said William
L. Taylor, a Washington lawyer, who worked on the Little Rock Nine's
appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after federal courts approved the
school board's plan to move them to a segregated high school in the
fall of 1958.

The Supreme Court overruled the lower courts in an unusual summer
session.

Mr. Taylor also said that the president should use his authority
under the federal Title I program, which aids schools with high
proportions of disadvantaged students, to allow children to transfer
out of schools that are not demonstrating students' academic
progress.

While Mr. Clinton briefly mentioned the enforcement steps he would
take, he spent more time urging the students in the audience to take
responsibility for their own actions.

"All of us should embrace the vision of a color-blind society, but
recognize the fact that we are not there yet and we cannot slam shut
the doors of educational and economic opportunity," he said.

Brown v. Board of Education. Text of the landmark
1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision. It states that the "separate but
equal" doctrine adopted in Plessy v. Ferguson "has no
place in the field of public education."

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